


Eavesdropping

by Sea-Glass (PJ_Marvell)



Category: Dark Matter - Michelle Paver
Genre: Gus is hopeless, Jack is oblivious, M/M, and all his friends know it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-15 23:08:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28821225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PJ_Marvell/pseuds/Sea-Glass
Summary: In which Jack goes back to the pub on the first night he met the others, and overhears an alternative explanation for the looks they were giving him.
Relationships: Gus Balfour/Jack Miller
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	Eavesdropping

_ Jack Miller’s journal, _

_ 7th January 1937 _

* * *

I really don’t know what to think.

I mean, it started much as I expected it would - less a friendly drink and more an interrogation session set in a pub. I even had to pay for the privilege - it was only polite to buy a round, even if it means I’ll barely be eating for the rest of the bloody week. Anyway, they asked me to come along on their expedition and I said I would. I left not long after and - 

What I kept coming back to was the way they looked at me. When I arrived, shouldering my way through the well-to-do crowd in the pub. The sweep of their eyes over my shabby suit, my unwashed hair. And when I left, when I glanced over my shoulder, I watched two of them exchange a grimace and a fatalistic, dismissive shrug. I simmered on those expressions as I walked out into the night and I made it perhaps five minutes down the road before I decided to hell with them, to hell with their expedition, and to hell with politeness.

I knew I hadn’t a chance with them so what was there to lose? I turned on my heel and began marching back towards the pub, fuelled by a righteous rage. I may not have been going to the Arctic, but at least I could remind one set of posh twits that their money didn’t entitle them to treat other people that way.

I was so lost in my anger that I swept into the pub through another door and felt momentarily disoriented. I spotted the table we’d been sitting at, hidden slightly behind a raised divider, mostly obscuring the others from view. I could see Algie Carslile’s sandy mop, and made a beeline for it.

“-just saying, if we go ahead as planned we’ll end up throwing him out of the rowing boat,” Teddy Wintringham was saying. I couldn’t see them - I was partially hidden by the wooden walls of hte booth they sat in and could only hear their voices.

“He might not be that bad?” Algie’s voice quailed, pitching up at the end as though he didn’t quite believe it.

“He  _ will _ ,” Teddy was emphatic, and I drew in a breath, preparing to let him know how bad I could be - “Remember summer vac in third year? We almost hurled him off the Matterhorn.”

\- and let it out in a rush. I’ve never been to Switzerland. Who on earth were they talking about? I glanced up, catching a glimpse of my own baffled expression in a mirror on the far wall and seeing that there were only three of them at the table - Teddy, Algie and Hugo, who was rubbing his temples in what looked like exasperation. I realised that if I could see all of us in the mirror, then so could anyone else in the pub. I quickly ducked further behind the dividing wall - I know how that looks, but I swear I had no motive, nefarious or not, past working out what the hell was going on.

“What exactly are you proposing,Teddy?” Hugo’s voice was sharp, aiming for stern but edging into the frantic. “Call the whole thing off? Do you know how much work it was just to get this far?”

“We know you worked hard, Hugo,” said Algie, sounding conciliatory. “But - Teddy does have a point. He can be absolutely wretched sometimes.”

I risked a quick glance around the room and spotted Gus Balfour at the bar, trying to get the barmaid’s attention. I remember thinking that it couldn’t possibly be  _ Gus _ they were talking about, surely? Gus who was basically the pattern for the Oxbridge English Gentleman?

“Oh he does, does he?” snapped Hugo. “How  _ convenient _ he had it just before we need to submit our grant application!”

“Steady on, old chap,” Teddy had also pitched his voice to soothing, although he couldn’t suppress a chuckle. “The problem didn’t present itself before tonight, as it were.”

“Fine,” said Hugo, after a deep breath. I felt a stab of sympathy for him. “Fine, supposing this really is untenable - and I’m not saying it is! - then what should we do?”

“I don’t suppose we could bring another wireless operator?” asked Teddy. “Miller is spiffing but that’s one way to get rid of the problem.”

_ Spiffing?  _ I thought, utterly bewildered. I’d never had the wind so effectively taken out of my sails.

“Absolutely not. It was hard enough to get Miller.” Hugo’s tone was taut.

“But there must be -”

“There isn’t, Algie - there’s not another man in London as well qualified as Miller and willing to work without a professional’s wage. Which, might I remind you,” I couldn’t see Hugo, but his voice painted the picture of his pointed finger-wag for me. “We can’t afford. We need someone who’ll come along for the adventure, not the pay.”

“Miller wasn’t the only one to apply, was he?” asked Teddy.

“Well - no,” said Hugo, some of his assurance evaporating. “We had a few others, but…”

“But what?”

“Well, Barnaby Culpepper said he could do it.” Hugo began.

“Old Bingo Culpepper?” Algie audibly brightened. “He’d be grand company!” Teddy agreed, both enthusing about their mutual friend and the adventures he’d got up to at the ‘varsity. I felt my heart sink and my lip curl simultaneously - I could feel the knowledge that I wouldn’t be going on the expedition drip down my spine like lead, but if they were going to replace me with someone named  _ Bingo _ then they weren’t worth a single damn.

“Wait - Hugo’s making a face. Why are you making that face?” Teddy spoke just as I had pulled myself together to leave and cut across Algie’s riveting tale of some party or other involving Bingo’s acquisition of a goat.

“Well, I had a chat with Bingo a month or so ago, back in Oxford” said Hugo with the air of a man about to announce a checkmate. “Asked him to demo some wireless skills on one of the college’s machines. He didn’t quite get the signals right.”

“What was he signalling?” asked Teddy.

“SOS.”

“...ah.”

“He assured me he’d pick it up as he went along,” said Hugo.

“Oh god,” groaned Teddy. “Bingo stays home, then.”

“Maybe he -” started Algie hopefully.

“Algie, Hugo wins this one. Bingo would get us all killed.”

“And Miller won’t?” The swish of tweed suggested Algie had crossed his arms as he huffed. “He looked like he wanted to fight all of us!”

“He did, rather. I liked him.” Hugo gave a neat little laugh. “Regardless, Miller  _ does _ know his way around a wireless.”

“But -”

“Dry up, Algie,” said Teddy, with a sigh. “If I’m going to die in the frozen wastes I’d rather it was because of malice than incompetence. Who else was on your slate, Hugo?”

“I had a letter from Rupert Saxon, you remember, took Classics at Balliol -”

“Absolutely not,” Algie snorted. “Saxon’s a blackshirt and I’m not putting up with that tripe for a year.”

“Seconded,” said Teddy. “Besides which, he’s probably some sort of German spy and I can’t see our War Office benefactors being happy with that.”

“Well, that leaves us with Ffolkes -” said Hugo.

“Ffolkes?”

“The chap involved with the Lacrosse Team Incident in second year -” Hugo paused a few moments to let the others’ extended exclamations of emphatic disgust die down “- I thought not. Well then, gentlemen, since we can’t go without a wireless operator, it’s Miller or no expedition.”

“Hugo I  _ can’t _ .” Teddy let out a sigh that ended in a small, despairing moan. “I can’t cope with Gus when he’s like this. I will end up throttling him.”

I felt an odd twist in my stomach at the confirmation that it was Gus they were talking about. Gus, who was the only one who seemed like he didn’t immediately hate me. Like he might have been a friend on this expedition. To find out that apparently that wasn’t true - or that we would somehow be so incompatible as to make the others hesitate in bringing me - it was gutting, in a small way.

“Buck up, Teddy,” Hugo said, resigned and amused. “We managed in Chamonix.”

“Yes, Hugo, but we could tell him to piss off in Chamonix and he had a whole town to do it in.” Teddy’s voice was muffled, as if he’d put his face in his hands. “We’ll be shut in a cabin with him this time.”

“Teddy -”

“For a  _ whole year _ , Hugo.”

There was a long pause filled with discontented shuffling.

“So, we absolutely have to have a wireless operator, yes?” said Algie slowly.

Hugo sighed in exasperation. “ _ Yes _ , Algie, that’s what -”

“Do we really  _ need _ a biologist?” he asked, brightly.

There was another moment of silence as his words sunk in and then the pair of them erupted in a gale of laughter.

“He is the  _ expedition leader _ , Algie.” Hugo’s attempt at firmness was utterly undermined by the fact he was still giggling.

“And he’s done an excellent job so far!” said Algie, his voice beginning to wobble with chuckles as he warmed to his subject. “He led us to the War Office funding, smashing job, good show and so on, but we have the rest covered, we can simply tell him we’ll take it from here!”

“You’ll take what from here?” asked Gus Balfour, his voice sudden and near. I didn’t hear what they told him after they’d recovered from their new bout of hysterics, because I abruptly realised I had been eavesdropping for the past few minutes and it was long past acceptable for me to declare my presence. I slunk away, looking anxiously behind me as Gus’ voice joined the conversation at the table, and set off home a second time.

I’ve been here for the past hour or so, mulling it over, looking at the clipping from the  _ Illustrated London News _ that’s been tacked over the mantelpiece for the last nine years.  _ A Polar Scene _ \- when I put it there I was so sure I was going to go, that I was going to make some groundbreaking discovery, get a nebula or a particle named after me. Pity my plans didn’t include strategies on how to cope with the set of upper-class madmen who’ll be there with me.

I really have no idea what I’m going to do. On the one hand, it looks like my initial anger was at least partially unfounded – they might even have liked me, although god knows they had a funny way of showing it. On the other…what was all that about? There’s something going on there that I don’t understand and from what I overheard, it hinges on me.

Jack, what the hell are you doing? Of course I’m going. The only other option is staying here, in this awful fog-choked city in my awful grey job and gradually letting it smother the life out of me. Whatever’s waiting for me in Spitsbergen can’t be worse than that, can it?

Well, at least the company might not be quite as bad as I thought. Apparently I’m  _ spiffing. _

**Author's Note:**

> This book has lived rent-free in my head for the last decade and it's finally produced some fic - all mistakes are my own. Thank you for reading!


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